In the midst of the pandemic, a 35 year old man I’ll call Sav, began shooting hoops in his hometown in Italy. First, he shot from the three point line. Then, he turned around and shot backward, sinking the basketball into the net. A few weeks later, he did it blindfolded. Then backward, blindfolded, and while jumping on a trampoline. 

The trick shot obsession grew to kicking ping pong balls into narrow-mouthed water jugs and launching soccer balls into basketball hoops with a golf club. In less than a year, he amassed millions of followers and cashed fat checks from merch and ad sales. 

Then, in the summer of 2022, Sav went dark. 

As it turns out, the followers, the money, the trick shots—all of it was a result of psychiatric drug withdrawal-induced akathisia, a constant state of tortuous restlessness and burning agitation that Sav described as “dishumane.” Unable to sleep or stop moving, Sav channeled his distress into intricate human tricks.

The circus nature of it all kept him occupied in between months long hospitalizations over 30 sessions of controversial electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). He spoke to every known doctor, expert, and advocate on the subject of withdrawal—including me—in hopes that someone could stop the pain. Nothing helped. Most suggestions just made things worse.

Today, Sav is in the process of ending his life through an assisted suicide organization in Switzerland. 

There is an aphorism in medicine, coined by former Dean of Medicine at Harvard Dr. Charles Sidney Burwell that says, “Half of what we are going to teach you is wrong, and half of it is right. Our problem is that we don’t know which half is which.”

I think about this quote constantly, both in the context of my own health and when people like Sav reach out to me for help. I can’t give medical advice since I’m not a doctor, but I can talk about my experience and share resources. Even when I’m passing along research done by other people, it’s a paralyzing to know how much we don’t know, how much I don’t know. What works for one person causes havoc in another. That’s all well and good if the body is strong enough to recover from all the self experimentation. But in a case like Sav’s, any little change seems to set off a cascade of irreversible negative effects.

So much of medicine, and especially a new field like psychiatric drug withdrawal, is focused on the how, not the why. The why is too expensive, requiring oodles of money and serious research. Sav’s case is the perfect example. He followed the leading theory of tapering off psychiatric drugs—hyperbolic tapering—a strategy that encourages small dose reductions, each one smaller than the one before, over a long period of time. Research shows that generally, this method lessens or eliminates withdrawal symptoms by allowing the brain and body to adjust without getting overwhelmed by the sudden lack of drug presence.

But there is a subset of people like Sav who don’t seem to tolerate this method. Instead, it’s like their body hits a limit with how much of the drug they can process, and these long tapers basically become prolonged poisoning. Sav told his doctors over and over again that he thought the taper was hurting him. He was dismissed and told to stay the course. Not knowing what else to do, he followed their advice. And he’s now going to Switzerland because of it.

I’ve heard similar stories from enough people to know that Sav’s story is not a one off. For these folks, there’s something going on physiologically that’s outside of the norm. My hunch is that it has something to do with the genetic component of their body’s CYP system, a complex bodily function involved in the metabolism of drugs, chemicals, hormones, and neurotransmitters. But until someone designs a study for people in withdrawal that analyzes genetic variants in the CYP system, it’s all just a guess. And I’m sure it’s not that simple. I’d also like to see fMRIs, qEEG, hormone panels, and VO2 max tests for people in withdrawal. Until that actually happens (if it ever happens), people like Sav are going to suffer thanks to well intended but myopic views.

Personally, I don’t know know how to deal with this. I’m heartbroken over Sav. I feel like the community failed him. It’s an impossible position for everyone. What percentage of people are sacrificial lambs on the path to truth and understanding? How do you instill hope in the hopeless? How do you help when sometimes the help is poison?

If there is any silver lining to this story, it is this: Sav told me he does not want to go quietly. He wants the world to know his story. We have a little bit of time. The checks and balances in Switzerland are many, for good reason, and he does not yet have a date.

Of course, I hope that between now and then some miracle shows up and he finds some relief. If not, I have to assume that he is a player in a bigger game. That somehow, his suffering won’t be in vain because it will lead to more awareness and education. He is, after all, a bit of a showman. Every trick shot sunk not just to distract himself, but to prove that nothing is impossible.

I will share his real name when he is ready to fully go public. In the meantime, he has given me permission to share his story. Thank you for reading.

In the year before and months after MAY CAUSE SIDE EFFECTS released, I didn’t read a single book. I’d just finished writing one, and reading other people’s work did nothing but invite comparison and insecurity. But something shifted when we flipped the page to 2023, and I’m back to devouring books at all hours of the day.

Among the stack I’ve recently finished is Dr. Ellen Vora’s The Anatomy of Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming the Body’s Fear Response.

Ellen is a Yale and Columbia University educated, board-certified psychiatrist who speaks openly about antidepressant withdrawal and the overprescription epidemic. Though Ellen and I haven’t ever met, we’re in occasional contact since she’s one of the few working psychiatrists with the balls to speak out about the pill for every ill “strategy” that seems to be doing more harm than good. Also an acupuncturist and yoga teacher, she practices from a functional-medicine foundation, meaning she believes most (if not all) mental health issues are caused not by disease or a chemical imbalance but by everything from unresolved trauma to lifestyle choices to blood sugar crashes.

The perk of this approach is that unresolved trauma, lifestyle choices, and blood sugar crashes are all things we have the power to fix. What a concept!

The conventional theory of anxiety is that it exists in the head and causes downstream, emotional and physical effects. In The Anatomy of Anxiety, Ellen argues that anxiety begins in the body, and that it’s the physiological stress response that causes mental anguish. Said another way, our brain chemistry changes as a result of an imbalance in the body, not the other way around. This is good news, she says, because this anxiety is both preventable and responsive to basic adjustments to habits, diet, and lifestyle.

Just as I did with Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus, I’ve compiled what I think are the 10 most important and interesting ideas from Ellen’s book. One caveat: The Anatomy of Anxiety is an outstanding starting point for those beginning to explore the mind-body connection and the basic science of anxiety. For those of you who spend a lot of time in this space, you’ll likely recognize much of the content. I worry that my familiarity with the topic means I’ve skimmed over obvious lightbulb moments. Thus, if you’re someone who struggles with anxiety and you don’t spend your free time nerding out over the science like I do, I highly recommend you take my word for it and get a copy for yourself. Understanding how your body works and why it reacts the way it does is a key first step in managing and healing anxiety.

Onward to the good stuff! (Bold emphasis mine.)

Ellen likes to differentiate from “true anxiety” and “false anxiety” in order to help her patients understand what is anxiety they can control (false), and what is anxiety that’s baked into human existence (true)

“False anxiety is the body communicating that there is a physiological imbalance, usually through a stress response, whereas true anxiety is the body communicating an essential message about our lives. In false anxiety, the stress response transmits signals up to our brain telling us, something is not right. And our brain, in turn, offers a narrative for why we feel uneasy…this type of anxiety is not here to tell you something meaningful about your deeper self; rather, it’s offering a more fundamental message about your body. When we recognize that we are experiencing anxiety precipitated by a physiological stress response, we can address the problem at the level of the body, by altering our diet or getting more sunshine or sleep. In other words, false anxiety is common, it causes immense suffering, and it’s mostly avoidable.”

True anxiety arises from having strayed from a vital sense of purpose and meaning. This anxiety is what it means to be human—to know the inherent vulnerability of walking this earth, that we can lose the people we love and that we too, will one day die…it is essentially a guide for how to make our lives as full as they can be.

Between 2019 and 2021, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that rates of anxiety and depression skyrocketed by 270 percent.

Genes simply don’t adapt that quickly, which punctures quite the hole in the theory of anxiety as a genetic disorder. (Never mind the fact that an “anxiety gene” has never been identified.”

Ellen says: “These rates would not have risen so precipitously if these disorders had a predominantly genetic basis—which was our presiding understanding over the last several decades. Our genes cannot adapt so quickly as to account for our recent catapult into anxiety. It stands to reason that we are increasingly anxious because of the new pressures and exposures of modern life—such as chronic stress, inflammation, and social isolation. So, odd as it may sound, this recent acceleration is actually good news because it means there are straightforward changes we can make.”

Though we have the same stress response as we did thousands of years ago—when stress meant running from a saber-tooth tiger or finding consistent food supply—modern life gives us a very different set of circumstances to cope with. Rarely are we in life or death situations and instead experience regular, low-grade stressors like a bloated email inbox or road rage.

Still, “with our modern diets and habits—which frequently trigger stress responses in our bodies—many of us live in a near constant state of feeling under siege. Your blood sugar is crashing after eating something sweet? The body interprets this as a mild threat to survival. You stay dup too late doom scrolling on your phone? The body feels surrounded by danger. Sleep deprivation, chronic inflammation from eating foods you don’t tolerate, and the comment section on Twitter—these are all, from your body’s perspective, indications that your environment is not safe. So, the body releases stress hormones into your bloodstream, and this invisible chemical cascade manifests as the feelings and sensations of false anxiety.”

Because false anxiety is often caused by outside stressors, it’s also manageable if you know what to look for. The book goes into the science behind each of these bullet points, but as a starting point, here are Ellen’s recommendations for “pausing in the midst of turmoil” in order to understand the particular false anxiety that’s occurring as well as how to address it:

“I’m anxious, and I’m not sure why. Am I…

• Hungry? (eat something)
• Sugar-crashing or having a chemical comedown? (Did I just eat something sweet, processed, or laden with food coloring or preservatives? Have a snack and focus on making different choices next time.
• Overcaffeinated? (Perhaps this jittery anxiety is really caffeine sensitivity; tomorrow, drink less caffeine.)
• Undercaffeinated? (I drank less caffeine today than usual; dose up and aim for consistent daily caffeine consumption going forward)
• Tired? (Take a nap; prioritize an earlier bedtime tonight.)
• Dehydrated? (Drink some water.)
• Feeling sluggish? (Take a quick walk outside; dance.)
• Dysregulated? (Did I just engage in an internet rabbit hole or social media binge? Dance or go outside to rest the nervous system.)
• Drunk or hungover? (File this away to help inform future choices around alcohol.)
• Due for a dose of psychiatric medication? (Right before the next dose, I’m at the pharmacological nadir—or the point where the level of medication in my bloodstream is at its lowest, and this can affect mood. Time to take meds.)

(A note from Brooke in bold: I’d argue that the last bullet point could also include, “Time to take meds or if coming off meds, recognize this as a sign of psychiatric drug withdrawal and be kind to yourself.” )

True anxiety serves a purpose in society, as demonstrated by this fascinating 1980s study of primates:

“Studies of primates show that some members of the tribe are more anxious than others—these are the ones that tend to hang back, gathering the peripheries of the main group. In the 1980s, the late zoologist Dian Fossey decided to remove these more sensitive members of one group of chimpanzees to see how it would affect the rest of the community. Six months later, all the chimps were dead. ‘It was suggested that the anxious chimps were pivotal for survival,’ Sarah Wilson writes compellingly of this experiment in her book First, We Make the Beast Beautiful. ‘Outsiders, they were the ones who were sleeping in the trees on the edge, on the border, on the boundary of the community. Hyper-sensitive and vigilant, the smallest noise freaked them out and disturbed them, so they were awake much of the night anyway. We label such symptoms anxiety, but back when we were in trees, they were the early warning system for the troop. They were the first to scream, “Look out! Look out!”’”

(Side note, I’ve never used that many quotation marks before. My 10th grade English teacher Mrs. Utter would be proud.)

Though this study was on monkeys, the same can be said about more sensitive and anxious folks in the world. They alert everyone else to potential problems and dangers. (I.E., climate activists.)

The most positive (and counterintuitive) change I ever made to my sleep hygiene was when I started eating a hefty portion of starchy carbs at dinner.

Prior to this directive—which came from a high performance nutritionist and professor of muscle science at Cal Fullerton—I’d often skimp on starchy carbs at dinner in order to rationalize dessert, or go low-carb all together in a misguided attempt to cut calories and stay lean. My shitty sleep, I assumed, was unrelated.

As it turned out, this strategy was causing blood sugar spikes and crashes (with dessert) or causing overall low blood sugar (low-carb) that disturbed my sleep. When I added about a cup of cooked white rice or potatoes to the meal, my sleep issues evaporated. What happened?

Ellen explains: “If you typically get ‘hangry’—angry and irritable when you’re hungry—at 3pm, the overnight equivalent is waking up at 3am with racing thoughts, unable to fall back asleep. This typically happens when your blood sugar crashes overnight and your body counters with a stress response…a stress response can make your sleep more superficial, shunting you out of the deeper stages of sleep and making it more likely you’ll be jolted awake.”

The solution is to stabilize blood sugar throughout the night. I do this with a big, starchy carb heavy (but low sugar) meal. Ellen likes to eat a spoonful of almond butter before bed, and eats another spoonful if she wakes up jittery and anxious.

“Our bodies are increasingly bombarded with unrecognizable chemicals and food—ranging from pesticides to phthalates to Pop-Tarts (essentially, foreign agents our bodies didn’t evolve to deal with)—that provoke the immune system in much the same way a genuine infection would. A daily ingestion of Doritos, for instance, leaves the immune system belligerent and confused. It keeps fighting, thinking it stands a chance at killing off the ‘infection’ of Doritos, but our immune system isn’t build to defeat chips—not to mention that we get ‘reinfected’ with every snack. Over time, a consistently inflammatory diet can result in a dysregulated, hyper-vigilant immune system, an inflamed body, and sustained feelings of depression or anxiety.”

“The body is hardwired for survival,” Ellen says, “not for feeling calm.”

She’s says this in the chapter about psychiatric drug withdrawal, specifically in relation to benzodiazepines. But what I find most interesting about the statement is that we’re all walking around under the assumption that calm should be the norm and anxiety a pathogen to eradicate.

In reality, a part of our body is always looking out for dangers. It’s why we startle when we hear an unfamiliar thunk. Debilitating anxiety needs to be dealt with, of course, but bouts of it is just the body doing its job of trying to stay alive.

“We’re taught from a young age that when something is difficult, it is necessary to distract ourselves. When a child has a tantrum, we think, How can I make the crying stop? We know that if we hand the kid some sugar or a screen, they’ll probably be satisfied. Problem solved, right? Well, actually, now we’ve taught the kid: I can’t handle your big emotions, you can’t handle your big emotions, and should ever feel big emotions in your future life, quickly find something that will distract you, offer you a hit of dopamine, or numb you out. It’s no wonder even we adults turn to our phones or emotional eating when in fact we just need to feel our feelings and let our tantrums run their course.”

This is where true anxiety comes into play. Safety is an illusion. All our effort put into keeping our kids “safe,” building equity, or eating clean could be undone in a matter of moments. We do these things to bring a sense of order into our lives, but trying to white-knuckle our way to control often creates the exact anxiety we’re trying to prevent.

“We are anxious and exhausted because wee are fighting with reality, beliving things are supposed to go a certain way. Instead of showing us where we need more control, anxiety actually alerts us to where we need to let go; when we need to take a breath and patiently, courageously see where our particular path will take us.”

Last weekend, I was invited to sign copies of MAY CAUSE SIDE EFFECTS at a new bookstore in Santa Monica called Zibby’s Bookshop. A dozen or so other authors, including my writing mentor, were signing at the event as well. Afterwards, we all gathered in the lobby of a fancy hotel to drink wine, eat cheese, and bitch about the disaster that is publishing books. Everyone had a horror story, from “my Gen Z publicist will no longer talk on the phone because she says the phone is too stressful” to “my book came out two days before Covid shut the world down” to “my former agent stole my royalties and fled town in a Winnebago.” (I get to take credit for that last one.)

As nurturing and fulfilling as the evening was, I was exhausted from the intensity of it all. As a few of the ladies were transitioning from the party to the after party, I declined, instead deciding it was time to head back to my AirBnB.

“Brooke’s got strong boundaries,” my mentor said, her eyes scanning me like I was some sort of curious, alien species. “I need to work on that.”

This observation stuck with me because it butted up against a series of recent encounters where my “boundaries” caused confusion, discontent, or outright pain in other people. I put boundaries in quotes because to me, it doesn’t feel like a boundary. It feels like the most obvious thing in the world. By doing what’s best for me—in this case, getting a good night’s sleep—I guarantee that I won’t be exhausted in the morning. I’m nicer and more patient when I’m rested, which leads to more pleasant encounters with others, which means my day and everyone else’s is going to be easier. A win for me, a win for the world.

This is called egotistical utilitarianism, a phrase I first heard coined by Matthew McConaghy in an interview with Tim Ferris.

It’s a counterintuitive concept. An egoist does whatever is best for them. A utilitarian does whatever is best for others. How can such opposition fit together?

Because when we take action based on what benefits us the most, it also benefits those around us.

As McConaghy put it, “The decisions we make for the I, for ourselves, the selfish decisions are actually what’s best for the most amount of people — utilitarian — they are where the ‘I’ meets the ‘we’, where the selfish is the selfless.”

Don’t get confused by the “egotistical” part of this. Our negative connotation of the word, in the sense that people who are egotistical operate as if they’re the only mattering person on Earth, disappears when egotistical utilitarianism is fully understood. In this sense, it is about the reason for the action, not the action itself.

As an example, a fireman spends hours at the gym lifting weights, running on the treadmill, and staring at himself in the mirror. His friends and family are chuffy because he isn’t around that much or comes off too rigid in his adherence to the gym schedule. They want him to spend time with them. To tend to their emotional needs. But what’s really happening is the fireman’s inner drive to be in the best shape possible also allows him to have the physical ability and confidence to carry heavy firehoses, pull people out of burning buildings, and trust in his body’s carbon dioxide capacity. His usefulness as an individual, in this specific area where he excels, benefits the collective every time he goes out on a call. And when he is able to do his job to the best of his ability, he is more fulfilled in his life. The more fulfilled his life, the better and more present he can be with the people around him during the time he makes for them.

In my life, it plays out like this:

My work on antidepressant withdrawal is my priority. Full stop. It takes a tremendous amount of energetic effort to navigate a topic this heavy, leaving little energy in the tank to manage the needs of other people. It’s why I’m not married and don’t have kids. I simply don’t have the bandwidth.

As a result, most of my day to day choices are based on what’s best for me and my energy conservation. That means I’m often non-committal, have zero issues cancelling social plans, and don’t express a natural interest in other people’s lives. This comes off as flaky and uncaring, especially to the people in my inner circle who feel they deserve to be put ahead.

But the reality is I can’t do this work and impact the collective if I’m constantly shifting my focus because someone wants attention or pat on the back. If they’re dying or in a real crisis, then of course I’ll drop everything and show up. And I make a conscious effort to speak their love language and spend time with them when I do have the bandwidth. The folks who understand this balance—and more importantly, practice it themselves and manage their own feelings around it—are the people who have staying power.

To harness our drive and use it for the good of the whole is a powerful strategy for both individual and collective happiness. It’s doesn’t mean there won’t be times where you are called to perform an entirely selfless or selfish act, or where obligations and ethics won’t trump individual wants. But it’s worth exploring what exactly is best for you, and to watch what happens around you when to act upon it.

Today, I’d like to share with you an essay by Dr. Bonnie Burstow, a professor and psychotherapist who spent most of her career at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

The essay, published in the academic journal Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry in 2017, is the sort of work that burrows into your psyche. The core idea presented—that psychiatric drugging of children (including with ADHD drugs) is a form of child abuse—seems radical at first glance. But the deeper you get into the paper, the more difficult it is to argue with the claim.

I am going to refrain from injecting my own thoughts on the essay and instead leave you to process it on your own. However, the paper is quite dense and the language has an academic bent that can make it difficult to understand if you don’t speak academic-ese. Thus, I have pulled key highlights from the work and added them below. Everything blow is a direct quote from the essay. All emphasis (in bold) is my own.

I have also linked to the full paper through a public Google document. I encourage you to read the full piece and share it with your friends and family.

To learn more about Dr. Bonnie Burstow, who died on January 4, 2020, in this New York Times profile.

“Abuse is any behaviour that is used to gain and/or maintain power and control over another person” (Kelowna Women’s Shelter)

“Child abuse refers to any form of physical, psychological, social, emotional, or sexual maltreat- ment of a child whereby the survival, safety, self-esteem, growth, and development of the child are endangered. There are four main types of child abuse: neglect, emotional, physical, and sexual. (Royal Canadian Mountain Police, 2012)”

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 6:

1. State parties recognize that every child has the inherent right to life

2. State parties shall ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and the development of the child (UNCRC, Article 6).

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 37:

1. No child shall be subjected to torture or other cruel or unusual punishment.

2. No child shall be deprived of his or her liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily (UNCRC, Article 37).

If something constitutes abuse, it is not in the best interests of the person being subjected to it—not with women being battered, not with children being assaulted with harmful drugs.

There are, of course, people who would argue that a definition like this cannot cover the area of child abuse because, irrespective of other considerations, it is always critical to do what is in the best interests of the child. (Don’t claims like this frequently underlie oppression?)

For the past few years, I’ve felt a primal urge to disengage from the world around me. This inner restlessness is strongest when I’m in public and forced to witness the current state of our culture and values—garbage littering the streets, people Face-timing without headphones, rampant obesity, fourteen year old girls with false eyelashes and lip injections. It’s all inner pain manifested in the physical world, fueled by a system preying on people’s vulnerabilities to make money.

Bit of a bitch for cultivating happiness, eh?

As much as I see evidence of generational cultural improvement—for example, the expansion of gay and women’s rights over the past 50 years (save for the recent Supreme Court idiocy)—the cynic in me doubts we’ll see meaningful change in our lifetime when it comes to the environment, mental health, and ethical technological application. CO2 emissions, Big Pharma, and AI aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. The speed, money, and power generated from these industries is simply too persuasive under the current system. Perhaps a shift will occur one day, but for now, it seems to me that the real game is figuring out how to thrive as an individual in a toxic environment.

Enter Johann Hari and his new-ish book, Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How To Think Deeply Again. It’s one of the may books I’ve been reading when I retreat back into my sanctuary to think about how in the hell I’m going to maintain my sanity in a world so far removed from our animal nature.

It’s also a book that sat on my shelf for a long time because I said to myself, “I just wrote and published a book. My focus is just fine.”

Except, in the months since MAY CAUSE SIDE EFFECTS came out, I’ve been a scattered mess. No queue without a scroll through Instagram. No stoplight without an email check. No evening without an iPad.

Finally, after a conversation with a client who told me how he’s been leaving his phone at home and walking to his local library just to have a long stretch of uninterrupted time, I realized it was time for me to address my hijacked attention span.

Stolen Focus is one of the most powerful books I’ve read about living in the modern world. I encourage all of you to buy a hardcopy and read it in full (and I stress the hardcopy part, as opposed to an ebook or audio. People understand and remember less of what they read on screens.) But given that time is currency and that people just don’t read much any more (over 50% of Americans didn’t read a single book in 2022), I’m featuring ten of what I believe to be the most important quotes from Johann’s work. I hope these ideas will get you thinking about the world you live in and encourage you to take control and make active changes in your life and the life of your children.

“Democracy requires the ability of a population to pay attentional long enough to identify real problems, distinguish them from fantasies, come up with solutions, and hold their leaders accountable if they fail to deliver them…people who can’t focus will be more drawn to simplistic authoritarian solutions—and less likely to see clearly when they fail.”

“In 1986, if you added up all the information being blasted at the average human being—TV, radio, reading—it amounted to 40 newspapers’ worth of information every day. By 2007, they found it had risen to the equivalent of 174 newspapers per day. The increase in volume of information is what creates the sensation of the world speeding up.”

Physicist Sune Lehmann, a professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science said of the increase in perceived speed, “ ‘What we are sacrificing is depth in all sorts of dimensions. If you have to keep up with everything and send emails all the time, there’s no time to reach depth. Depth connected to your work in relationships also takes time…all these things that require depth are suffering. It’s pulling us more and more up onto the surface.”

Adam Gazzaley, a professor of neurology, phsiology, and psychiatry at the Univeristy of California explained it this way: “Think of your brain as like a nightclub where, standing at the front of that club, there’s a bouncer. The bouncer’s job is to filter out most of the stimuli that are hitting you at any given moment—the traffic noise, the couple having an argument across the street, the cellphone ringing in the pocket of the person next to you—so that you can think coherently about one thing at a time. The bouncer is essential. This ability to filter out irrelevant information is crucial if you are going to be able to attend to your goals…In addition to switching tasks like never before, our brains are also being forced to filter more frantically than at any point in our past…The bouncer is overwhelmed, and the nightclub becomes full of rowdy assholes disrupting the normal dancing.”

“Sune [Lehmann] had seen a photograph of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, standing in front of a room of people who were all reaching virtual reality headsets. He was the only person standing in actual reality, looking at them, smiling, pacing proudly around. When he saw it, Sune said, ‘I was like—holy shit, this is a metaphor for the future.’ If we don’t change course, he fears we are headed toward a world where ‘there’s going to be an upper class of people that are very aware’ of the risks to their attention and find ways to live within their limits, and then there will be the rest of society with ‘fewer resources to resist the manipulation, and they’re going to be living more and more inside their computers, being manipulated more and more.’ ”

“If you go too fast, you overload your abilities and they degrade. But when you practice moving at a speed that is compatible with human nature—and you build that into your daily life—you begin to train your attention and focus. Slowness nurtures attention, and speed shatters it.”

“When people think they’re doing several things at once, they’re actually “juggling” as Professor Earl Miller at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology explains. He continues, “ ‘They’re switching back and forth. They don’t notice the switching because the brain sort of papers it over, to give a seamless experience of consciousness…but if you spend a lot of this brain processing time switching and error correcting, you are simply giving your brain less opportunity to follow your associate links down to new places and really [have] truly original and creative thoughts.’ “

In short: “If you spend your time switching along, then the evidence suggests you’ll be slower, you’ll make more mistakes, you’ll be less creative, and you’ll remember less of what you do.”

“The cognitive neuroscientist Dr. David Strayer at the University of Utah conducted detailed research where he got people to use driving simulators and tracked how safe their driving was when they were distracted by technology—something as simple as their phone receiving a text. It turned out their level of impairment was “very similar” to if they were drunk. The distraction all around us isn’t just annoying, it’s deadly: around one in five car accidents are now due to a distracted driver.”

“We evolved to get a rush of energy when the sun began to set. This was very helpful to our ancestors…[who] got a fresh rush of energy just as the light waned so they could safely get back to their tribe and finish the things they needed to do that day. But now we control the light. We decide when the sunset happens. So if we keep bright lights switched on right until the moment we decided to go to sleep, or we watch TV on our phones in bed, when we switch them off we accidentally trigger a physical process—our bodies think this budding waning of light is the arrival of sunset, so they release a rush of fresh energy to help you get back to your cave.”

Johann spends a good chunk of the book exploring the ADHD topic, but in my opinion, it boils down to the following:

“To pay attention in normal ways, you need to feel safe. When children can’t pay attention, it’s often a signal that they are under terrible stress. If you’re medicating a child in that situation, you’re colluding with them remaining in a violent or unacceptable situation.”

Aza Raskin, former creative lead at Firefox, designed the now-ubiquitous “infinite scroll” that keeps content continuous on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. What started off as a way to make browsing more convenient has now been usurped by Big Tech to keep eyeballs on screens, because “the longer you make people look at their phones, the more advertising they see—and therefore the more money Google gets.”

Aza says, “one of the ironies is there are these incredibly popular workshops at Facebook and Google about mindfulness–about creating the mental space to make decisions nonreactively—and they are also the biggest perpetrators of non-mindfulness in the world.”

Chamath Palihapitiya, Facebook’s former Vice President of growth, explained in a speech that the effects [of Facebook] “are so negative that his kids ‘aren’t allowed to use that shit.’”

James Williams, former Google strategist, once “addressed an audience of hundreds of leading tech designers and asked them a simple question: ‘How many of you want to live in the world you are designing?’ There was a silence in the room. People looked around them. Nobody put up their hand.”

It’s been a frigid and snowy year winter in the Washoe Valley, and much of our infrastructure is being tested. Trees are down all over town, the weight of heavy snow too much for delicate branches. Reno’s signature neon lights are dim and patchy, presumably due to wiring shorts. My house lost power and cell service for three days over the New Year’s weekend, leaving the dog and me to head across town and huddle next to my mother’s fireplace.

I am struck by the obvious metaphor: it is in times of extreme events where cracks— disregarded for so long—become too big to ignore. It was only in the aftermath of the power outage that support from Oregon and Idaho was brought in, despite long-standing signs of a grid too fragile to handle a heavy winter.

The timing of these storms plus the entry into a new year has pushed me into a state of reflection and repair. The extreme personal events of 2022—the release of MAY CAUSE SIDE EFFECTS, the death of a friend, discovering a genetic mutation, and the slow, torturous separation from a long-term partner—didn’t just reveal cracks, it shorted the entire system and is now forcing me to rebuild.

At the center of this restructure is the question: What am I optimizing for?

Said another way: What kind of life do I want? How do my choices support or work against that goal?

For each answer that comes to mind, I look for the core value underneath. For example, a big goal is to never send out a resume or apply for a job ever again. This means my past work feeds the flywheel that creates future work. Practically, it means I need to keep producing so the flywheel has a steady stream of energy.

But the bigger question is why it’s so important for me to never again go through a formal job search, and that comes down to how I want to live my life. I value my independence and ability to be in charge of my own schedule above all else. If I’m going through a traditional application process, it means I’d be working for someone else, therefore giving up a core value to meet external expectations. It’s just not going to work for me.

Following this train of thought, I’ve come up with the following North Star: I am optimizing to create a life where I work as much as I want and earn as much as I need.

Simplifying the goal to a single sentence will, in theory, help me make choices that support this goal. A shiny opportunity with a lot of money may come along, but if I already have as much money as I need and the new job requires me to work more than I want, why would I go down a path that works against my core values?

Last weekend, I did something I rarely do: I went out. Like out out. I put on heels, wore makeup, and made chitchat with strangers at a fundraiser for a local museum. 

I was invited as a date for a friend whose husband went on a last minute business trip, leaving her as the lone stag in a group of eight couples. My butt did a great job of filling the seat, but a table of familiar faces brought not a sense of inclusion, but the sting of loneliness. 

The experience highlighted a nagging feeling I’ve had since MAY CAUSE SIDE EFFECTS was published in September. The book was, in many ways, my best friend. A constant, intimate presence, it persisted through the ebbs and flows of my life, the work often reflecting my reality. It gave me a sense of purpose, never wavered in its dedication, and showed up when I needed it. When it hit bookshelves, it’s like it moved away. It isn’t mine any more. It belongs to other people now, influencing their lives while I scramble to fill the void. 

Though the loss has gifted me oodles time, it also illuminates neglect. All of my relationships have suffered over the past five years, particularly my friendships. As a single person with no kids and a minuscule family unit—it’s just me and my mom, no siblings or notable extended family—I’ve always kept a mental running list of friends who would step up in a crisis, no questions asked. 

I don’t know if there’s anyone on that list anymore. 

Years ago I might have blamed this development on the failure of the parties involved, assuming we just didn’t try hard enough. Now, I understand that biology and social psychology is at play, and that itinerant life I’ve led isn’t conducive to creating and maintaining intimate friendships.

The number and quality of friendships is the single most important indicator of longevity and happiness and as we age, friendships become more important for health than family. 

But in 2021, 12 percent of American adults said they had no close friends, contributing to the loneliness crisis that began well before, but was exacerbated by, the pandemic. 

So how do we make friends as adults? More importantly, how do we create meaningful friendships that increase happiness? I dove into the research of evolutionary psychologist and friendship expert Robin Dunbar to find out.

Robin Dunbar is best known for Dunbar’s Number, which he defines as the number of relationships people are able to cognitively able to manage and maintain at once. He puts this number at 150, which unsurprisingly, is just about the size of the average American wedding guest list. 

These 150 people are made up both friends and family and sorted into a sort of circular hierarchy. The closer the ring of people around you, the fewer the people in the ring. 

In the bullseye with you is an spouse or intimate partner, followed by three to five people who make up the first ring, usually family members and a close friend or two. The next ring expands and holds secondary characters. Grandma, perhaps. Friends you know very well but maybe not the one you call in a crisis. From there, we expand through the rings of fair weather friends, colleagues, extended family, old friends who live in different places, and so on through the target.

Meaningful friendship is woven by shared experience and regular exposure. Therefore, the best way to make new friends is to engage in a consistent, social activity like a weekly meetup group. 

When we’re kids, this is automatic. We go to school or an after school activity, see the same people every day, and become friends. As adults, we lose opportunities for that natural interaction. Some people get it through work, but for someone like me who works alone and at home, I have to create it. It’s no surprise, then, that the people in my “close” and “best” friend circles over the years have come from going to the same CrossFit class, at the same time, five days a week for years. 

It’s also not surprising that over the past six years, when I was either traveling internationally or splitting my time between Canada and the US, my friendships suffered. I’d be in town for three weeks and leave for two months. People had babies in the time I was away. 

In my head, they still remained in the “close” or “best” category because I didn’t stay in one place long enough to forge a friendship strong enough to fill the space. But while I was away, my place in their hierarchy shifted, knocking me to outer circles. 

Where people stand in the hierarchy is constantly shifting. When you see less of someone because you see more of somebody else, it pushes people in and out of different circles. We see this happen all the time when people enter new relationships. In an interview with Dan Harris on the Ten Percent Happier Podcast, Dunbar said that falling in love can actually take the place of two close relationships, because the mental energy and attention devoted to the new person inevitably boots two people out of the ring. This explains why people disappear when they get into a relationship. It’s not because they don’t care or are blinded by love. It’s because we have limited capacity.

When life separates “close” and “best” friends, the instinct is to hold those people in their circles by keeping in touch through social media or phone calls. Though social media has a reputation for, you know, toppling democracy and obliterating societal mental health, it’s actually supports relationship intimacy. But with limited energy to devote to friendships, time spent on Facebook eats into opportunities for in-person connection. 

For relationships in the outer rings, this isn’t a big deal. But at the inner rings, intention is crucial. As Dunbar says, people might be “better off finding a new shoulder to cry on just round the corner, so when the world does fall apart, they can walk around the block, knock on their door and get a hug.”

Said another way by the lyricist Stephen Stills: “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.” 

The hardest part of making friends—especially in a new place—is the beginning. But once you engage in a community and show up consistently, proximity will eventually lead to connection. Once those connections are made, the circles naturally expand as people get introduced to one another, creating a flywheel affect that ultimately leads to the sort of event I found myself at last weekend. 

As I felt sorry for myself at the table, envious that these sixteen (!) adults had so much support for one another, I wondered what it was about me that made me feel so separate. 

The answer is that while I was off in Cambodia or Croatia for a month at a time, they were all moving back to Reno and starting their families. All of them have kids around the same age. They get together for play dates and PTA meetings. When the kids aren’t around, they share the common ground gained from so many years of similar experience, often within walking distance of one another. 

It’s a barrier I’m just not going to be able to crack. But that’s okay. There’s plenty of room for them in my “good friends” category, and now I won’t beat myself up wondering why I can’t bring them closer.

Over the past few months, I’ve been undergoing a series of extensive and thorough medical tests to get to the bottom of some physical issues I’ve been struggling with for years. Since well before these tests began, I’ve intuitively known two things to be true: something is inside me isn’t right but that whatever it is, it is treatable.

And yet, all my interactions with the American medical system thus far have led me to dead ends. Despite my history of extended international travel, few tests were run, with doctors dismissing my hunches because by most metrics, I’m a functioning individual. Instead, they assumed inconclusive diagnoses like IBS, lupus, stress, age. The solution was to relax! Drink more water! Eat more fiber! One doctor even suggested an antidepressant to help with gut issues, to which I smirked, raised an eyebrow, and resisted the urge to hand over a draft of my book along with my absurd $100 copay.

In September, after five years of this song and dance, the right professionals appeared at the right time. Instead of looking at each one of my issues in a vacuum, as if each symptom existed independently from the rest, my team analyzed my lab results and lifestyle from the perspective of an interconnected organism.

A saliva test, for example, indicated high cortisol (stress) levels but nonexistent estrogen and progesterone (sex hormone) levels. Looked at independently, the answer is hormone therapy that lowers cortisol and raises estrogen and progesterone. Simple, right?

Nope. A urine analysis revealed nearly nonexistent levels of metabolized cortisol, and a blood test showed signs of kidney dysfunction. Therefore, it’s not that my body produces too much cortisol, it’s that it can’t process it, which is a totally different problem that would not be fixed by lowering cortisol through drugs.

Still, this wasn’t the root of my complicaitons. My poor cortisol production was a symptom of a greater issue we discovered: a raging bacterial infection and parasitic presence, likely picked up while I was traipsing around the globe back in 2016. The constant stress of the infection increases cortisol production (and therefore lowers sex hormones because evolutionarily, it was unadvisable for our ancestors to focus on baby-making during stressors like famine or tribal war.) But because my gut is renting out space to unwelcome squatters, it’s not absorbing nutrients or electrolytes. Thus, I’m dehydrated no matter what I drink, which explains the kidney dysfunction, and the kidney dysfunction leads us right back to….poor cortisol processing! Hallelujah! Answers!

Why am I telling you this?

Two reasons. First, my gut bug story is a reminder to follow your intuition when it comes to your health. Half a dozen doctors dismissed my complaints, for years. I get it. They’re trained to look for extremes and to fit people into boxes of symptoms because that’s how we bill insurance companies. But the only person who knows you, is you. If you’re not a hypochondriac and you think something is off, follow that thread. Either you don’t find anything and you can breathe easy, or you turn out to be right.

Second, in going through this process, I was struck by how a whole-body approach to physical health is so similar to successful treatment of mental health. In both cases, few professionals actually look at comprehensive systems. An internist analyzes the gut and an endocrinologist analyzes the hormones, but at no point does either specialist talk to the other. The same is true for our approach to mental health. If you meet the criteria for depression, a psychiatrist gives you a diagnosis and a prescription slip. If you’re lucky, you work with someone who lets you talk a little bit about your wounds and your stressors for forty-five minutes, once a month.

While a series of lab tests were able to diagnose my root physical issues (the rent’s about to skyrocket, gut bugs), it’s rare to find people who are willing to dig around for root issues in their psyche. This work requires radical acceptance, ferocious commitment, and an unrelenting belief that it is possible to heal. It will ask someone to face their deepest shame, make extreme changes to their life, and to prioritize this work above all else. It requires financial commitment. It often gets worse before it gets better. It is hard. But it is also how we heal, how we build the strength to support a beautiful life.

I will be spending the next six months on a strict diet & supplementation schedule to evict the unwanted tenants living in my belly. What if you also spent the next six months committed to your physical and/or mental health? What if you went all in and committed to addressing the issues you know, intuitively, are bubbling inside your mind or body? What if you trusted that the work would pay off? What might your new life be like?

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Thank you everyone for your support over the past few months. I’ve spent the time in monk-mode, putting the last serious edits into my memoir, MAY CAUSE SIDE EFFECTS (Central Recovery Press, June 2022).

The work paid off. Johann Hari, award-winning journalist and author of the international bestseller Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression and Unexpected Solutionssaid my book is “a heart-rending and tender memoir that will start conversations we urgently need to have.” Lost Connections is arguably the best book on depression and depression recovery in the world, and I am honored to have Johann endorse my work.

MAY CAUSE SIDE EFFECTS is available for preorder. If you can, please consider ordering from your local independent bookstore. Not only does it support local business, but bestseller lists rank orders from independent bookstores higher than orders from Amazon.

Barnes & Nobles | Amazon | Indiebound | The Writer’s Block

Because so many people reach out to me with questions about depression, antidepressants, and recovery, I decided to make those questions part of my blog repertoire.

If you would like to Ask Brooke a question, you can do so here.

Today’s question is from a reporter at HerCampus who asked:

My father died when I was in high school, so I spent much of my college experience “grieving” his death. I say “grieving” because at that point, I was medicated up to my eyeballs on psychiatric drugs given to me to inhibit the grieving process. The decision to medicate me as a response to grief has had long term consequences on my life (it’s what my book is about), so this is a topic that sits deep in my heart.

There are two key aspects to processing grief, especially as a young person whose mind isn’t fully developed. The first, and arguably most important, is to understand that the response to grief is not necessarily aligned or timed with the trauma itself. 

Hours after my father died, I went to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show and laughed with my friends. The adults around me were perplexed, and I remember feeling like I “shouldn’t” be happy (cue the shame) even though I was happy to be there.

Now, as a 35-year old, I understand their confusion. But as a teenager, I didn’t get what it meant to lose a parent. It was kind of like the first day of calculus. I had a vague notion that it was going to be hard, but because I didn’t understand any of it on the first day of school, the looming difficulty didn’t mean anything to me. It took time for me to understand enough about calculus to even have the vocabulary to describe how difficult it was, just like it took months for me to show any sort of outward grief from losing my father. But by then, I’d been sent to a psychiatrist because I wasn’t “grieving properly.”

What actually happened was that I was in shock from the trauma and slow to release emotion. I wasn’t aware that trauma and emotion can be separated by weeks, months, or years, so everyone (including me) thought I was “doing okay.” When the emotion finally did come out, I blamed it on the circumstance at the time, thinking that because I’d been “doing okay” so far, my emotions were unrelated to grief.

This is tricky because grief is often mistaken for a psychiatric illness, which leads to misdiagnosis and overmedication. Over the years, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has changed its criteria for distinguishing between major depressive disorder and grief. The third edition of the DSM, which governed the psychiatric industry from 1980 to 1994, gave patients one year of bereavement leeway before they could officially be diagnosed with a mental disorder. The fourth edition of the DSM slashed the timeframe down to two months. And the DSM-V, published in 2013, eliminated it entirely. Rather, if you’re not “over” a in a few weeks, you can be officially diagnosed with a mental illness—an unconscionable change, in my opinion.

It’s also important for young people to understand that grieving includes joy. Grief is not necessarily a blanket of blurry darkness in which no levity can get through. It comes in waves, which means there are pockets of time to feel joy. Fully feeling that joy or happiness is just as important as feeling the loss. Joy reminds us that we are alive and that we have something to live for. It honors the person or experience that’s been lost.

Had I known that back when I went to the Rocky Horror Picture Show, I may not have stepped into the shame of experiencing joy during grief. I may not have learned to view the world through a nihilist, depressed lens. I may never have been medicated for a mental illness I don’t know if I ever really had.

What I know for sure is that when I got off all the antidepressants, after 15 years, the grief I’d medicated away for so long was still there. I had to process it, a decade and a half later, which was much more destructive than it would have been had I let it unfold naturally.

Grief will always wait for you. It can be delayed but not avoided. Embrace it when it comes. Process it. Know that by feeling it you are transforming it into light and love.

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After 15 years of depression and antidepressants, my mission is to help people find hope in the name of healing. My memoir on the subject, MAY CAUSE SIDE EFFECTS, publishes on May 10, 2022. Pre-order it on Barnes & Nobles, Amazon, or wherever books are sold. For the most up-to-date announcements, subscribe to my newsletter HAPPINESS IS A SKILL.

One of the most underrated and useful techniques in creating a steady life is to understand the purpose of priority. And yet, like most things in our hustle harder society, “priority” is a word that only comes up around work. We instinctively know that when it comes to our job, there are certain things that are more important than others. We’re okay with letting busy work fall to the wayside when a deadline is looming, but when it comes to our personal life, prioritization is often replaced with the phrase, “I don’t have time.”

As in, “I don’t have time to work out” or “I don’t have time to cook” or “I don’t have time to write that novel.”

This is, to be frank, bullshit. You do have time to work out. You do have time to cook. You do have time to write that novel. It’s just that none of this is your priority. You are not choosing to build these activities into your day, and therefore it doesn’t get done.

Whenever I point this out to people who complain about not getting around to one thing or another, I’m always shocked by how defensive they become. When it comes to things we “should” be doing, we have a nasty habit of defending our own choices in order to rationalize our lack of action. We let the excuses fly, as if not working out or not cooking is somehow an attack on our character.

But if we shift our mindset from “I don’t have time” to “it’s not my priority,” we relieve ourselves of the guilt that comes with not accomplishing a task. Working out simply isn’t a priority. Cooking is not a priority. Writing a novel is not a priority.

And it’s okay.

As long as you’re being honest with yourself about why you choose to spend your time the way you do, it doesn’t matter if you never step foot in a gym or put pen to paper.

This blog is my priority every Monday morning. Objectively, the few hours of dedicated writing are probably better spent on paid work, pitching editors, or trying to build a better following so my book gets bought. But, even though it won’t be winning a Pulitzer and I’m not influencing millions of people with my words, I like starting my week with a low-stakes task that keeps me writing and reflecting. And I know that if I don’t do it on Monday morning before I get bogged down with other jobs, it won’t get done. So I prioritize it first.

What frustration would melt away if you acknowledge that all the things you “don’t have time to do” are simply not your priority right now? How might your life be more enjoyable if you stop beating yourself up for everything you’re not doing? And what might happen if you shift your priorities toward what you really want?

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After 15 years of depression and antidepressants, my mission is to help people find hope in the name of healing. My memoir on the subject, MAY CAUSE SIDE EFFECTS, publishes on May 10, 2022. Pre-order it on Barnes & Nobles, Amazon, or wherever books are sold. For the most up-to-date announcements, subscribe to my newsletter HAPPINESS IS A SKILL.

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“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” – Victor Frankl

In a recent interview with Tim Ferriss, author and business strategist Greg McKeown talked about a concept he called, “The Lighter Path.”

The Lighter Path, in essence, is the ability to cultivate a spirit of hope and ease even in the most difficult of times. Its antithesis is not the darker path, but the heavier path; the path that creates more chaos, more hurt, more work.

McKeown developed this idea after his bubbly, chatty 14-year-old daughter, Eve, began to turn morose and awkward. Her personality change was originally written off as typical teenage behavior, but after Eve failed a basic physical therapy test, she was taken to a neurologist. Despite a battery of inconclusive tests, her condition worsened to the point where Eve could no longer talk or write her own name.

“Everything came back negative, sort of good news, but bad news because you’d have no idea what’s going on,” McKeown said. “And she is fully on the way to becoming comatose and then dying in a coma…this is the stuff that agony is made of, right?”

McKeown realized that despite his daughter’s grim condition, he had two choices: he could take the lighter path and make this already awful situation easier on himself and his family, or, he could take the heavier path and make it more even more difficult.

In a crisis or as a response to trauma, the heavier path is tempting and easy to fall into. It starts with complaining or trying to solve the problem through sheer effort. Focusing all that energy on one person or problem can take the air out of the room for everyone else, leading to destroyed marriages and families.

“All of these things weren’t just hypothetical,” McKeown said. “They were right there. There was that opportunity.”

The lighter path, though, creates a space of trust and hope. While it “doesn’t feel super light,” it is lighter than the heavier path. And in times of crisis, we need all the help we can get.

McKeown said, “We would get around the piano and we would sing. We would read together at night. We would do the small and simple and even enjoyable things. And so, what was at times agonizing, but could have been seriously worse, even, was actually punctuated with joy.”

Despite never getting a formal diagnosis, Eve McKeown fully recovered. Though her story creates a poignant container to explore the idea behind light and heavy paths, it’s important to note that we don’t need a crisis to choose the lighter path.

Take a moment and think about the topography of your life. Are there any burdens, grudges, or transgressions you haven’t forgiven? Are you in a constant state of anger and defensiveness over the injustices of the world? Is there clutter, literal or figurative, that simply makes life harder?

All of this leads to a life lived on the heavier path. To become aware of the heaviness and to consciously choose to rewrite the stories around this heaviness—that is the work. That is your job. And it isn’t all or nothing. Removing even 20% of your psychic drag could have a huge impact on your life.

Start small. Maybe it’s saying “no” to a draining project, smoothing things out with an old friend who voted for the other guy, or pausing before you write a knee-jerk text message that’s sure to cause more chaos.

Simply ask yourself, before you make a choice, “Does this have to be difficult?”

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After 15 years of depression and antidepressants, my mission is to help people find hope in the name of healing. My memoir on the subject, MAY CAUSE SIDE EFFECTS, publishes on May 10, 2022. Pre-order it on Barnes & Nobles, Amazon, or wherever books are sold. For the most up-to-date announcements, subscribe to my newsletter HAPPINESS IS A SKILL.

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During my decade and a half of deep depression, my mother often said to me, “Honey, you can choose not to be depressed.”

To which I responded, seething, “Depression isn’t a choice. Why would I choose this? I can’t just turn it on and off.”

And then I’d huff out of the room and stew in twisted satisfaction, my depression a badge of honor. I didn’t believe that depression was a choice, but I did believe that enduring my depression made me stronger than everyone who wasn’t persisting through darkness.

Today, I cringe at my own response. Here was a woman who, after being widowed at 47, survived breast cancer, underwent open-heart surgery, kept a business with 40 employees afloat during the recession, and did it all while raising an only child who spent those years huffing out of the room. My mother had every reason to fall into a hole of depression, and yet she never succumbed. That’s real strength. Some people might look at the difference between my mother and me as a difference in “brain chemistry.” Rather, one of us was “wired” to go off the depression deep end while the other was not.

I don’t buy it. Not only because the chemical imbalance theory has been debunked over and over and over and over and over again, but because in looking at how my mother and I processed the traumas of our individual lives, she chose to exercise the muscle of it-can-happen-to-anyone resilience while I exercised the muscle of moral elitism. Rather, I repeatedly chose to feed my inherent belief that I was special and therefore, tragic.

Part of this was age. I was 15 when my father died, arguably the most self-involved age in existence. And while I’d love to say that my lugubrious swim in the seas of melancholy was unconscious, the reality is that I knew exactly what I was doing. I liked the pity. I liked the attention. I liked the freedom of loss. No one expects much of the grieving, and I was happy to be left alone.

Had I shed this narrative once I graduated high school, perhaps I could have started to build the muscle of resilience. Instead, I doubled down on moral elitism, working that muscle from all angles until I was left with nothing but suicidal thoughts. It was never a choice to To Be or Not To Be Depressed, but the culmination of fifteen years of small choices that atrophied my resilience.

That is the choice my mother was talking about all those years ago. Depression is a beast that rips the reigns from your hands and drags you along for the ride. But it ebbs and flows, leaving pockets of opportunity where it’s up to you to find the strength to pick up those reigns and right yourself back on course.

No, there isn’t an on-off switch. But there is the single choice to commit to making thousands of little choices, building more and more resilience and awareness. Like a muscle, it gets stronger over time. And just like building muscle, it starts slow. One little choice. One little change. One little life.

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After 15 years of depression and antidepressants, my mission is to help people find hope in the name of healing. My memoir on the subject, MAY CAUSE SIDE EFFECTS, publishes on May 10, 2022. Pre-order it on Barnes & Nobles, Amazon, or wherever books are sold. For the most up-to-date announcements, subscribe to my newsletter HAPPINESS IS A SKILL.

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